


In Your Blue Breath

by hwaribo



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Bubble Bath Scene, Hurt/Comfort, Leather Jackets, M/M, Makeouts, Motorcycles, Poison, Smoking, Weapons, all the sexy deadly things but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 04:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20129647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hwaribo/pseuds/hwaribo
Summary: It all starts when Jaehyun thinks it's fun and games to steal an assassin's pistol and point it at him, to steal an assassin's job and do it for him. Hyunjoon wants to kill him for it, but it doesn't come as easily as it does with all his other victims. He's in love with him, but how could he be?(Hyunjoon and Jaehyun are both poison and antidote for each other.)





	In Your Blue Breath

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: um well ok. this fic is kind of dark and heavy and there are a lot of mentions of death and killing because of the nature of an assassins/hitmen au so please do not come into this expecting it to be fluffy. lots of weapons and threatening. mentions of violence and mild physical injury. mentions of poison. oh and a kill-pill, which was technically used in the world wars as a form of suicide by soldiers/spies rather than being tortured and interrogated and forced to submit to an enemy. but no character in here is suicidal at all, it's just a last resort option in their line of work, if they get caught. and no one dies or is seriously injured of course. happy reading!

The world outside is grey, same-old, smoke and exhaust and closed store shutters; the world inside, underground, is pink, an infectious bubblegum hue. With every step down the two flights of stairs through the hole-in-the-wall, a doorway barely visible in an unlit alley, it glows brighter, and with it comes the sound of music, of people, of life, as though the heart of this dreary grey world thumps here under the left lung of town.

The colour is almost scented, almost flavored, addictive and enticing to the senses. It attracts the sweet and the deadly. Everything is bathed in rose-coloured light, and the music drowns out the unpleasant, so in a way, it’s the perfect scene for a quiet little crime. _He really set himself up for this, _Hyunjoon thinks, smug and at ease.

Hyunjoon sits at the bar counter and watches them out of the corner of his eye. Bodyguards, bouncers, many of them, forming a protective circle around Hyunjoon’s target for tonight, as he makes his way into a backroom for a game of baccarat.

His name is unimportant, Hyunjoon hardly remembers it; he’s an important piece in the underground cartels, that’s for sure, but he’s not the first nor the last that Hyunjoon will be dealing with. Vermin, and Hyunjoon plans to exterminate him the same as every other one. Swift, clean kills, no blood on his hands, so to speak. He fingers his silver pistol through the holster gartered to his thigh, biding his time.

The stool next to his slides out, and a someone in leather takes a seat. He’s got pretty eyes, startled doe eyes when he looks around, fluttering bedroom eyes when they land on Hyunjoon. They send a shiver up his spine.

“A margarita and a strawberry daiquiri, please,” he tells the bartender. His words are much too soft for a place like this. Hyunjoon finds it hard not to underestimate him.

“Who’s the second drink for? I didn’t see anyone with you.”

“I _am_ alone,” he agrees, sliding the tall glass of phosphorous pink, the colour violent as a result of both the fruit in it and the lights around them, towards Hyunjoon.

Hyunjoon takes a sip. Sweet and strong, stained lips and tongue, just the way he likes it. Jaehyun watches him imperceptibly, looks him up and down, side to side, right through him.

“Why are you staring? Like what you see?” Hyunjoon asks, three buttons undone on his shirt and a tangle of cold metal around his neck and between his clavicles, preening under the attention even though he knows he won’t be doing anything with it, not tonight. What a pity, but if the boy with the pretty eyes is meant to carve a place for himself in Hyunjoon’s life, then they’ll cross paths again somewhere else. Hyunjoon would like to see him in full sun sometime, as well as in the intimacy of lights-out darkness.

“Sure,” he responds lightly. He does like what he sees, but that’s not what’s captivating him. He won’t tell Hyunjoon what is. “Can you dance?”

He scoffs, and that’s enough of an answer. So they do, mirrored opposites of each other, but when they find a way, they melt into one. Hyunjoon is fluid, overwhelming, and Jaehyun seems reserved, so he takes his hands and directs him, pressing closer to him in this washed-out underground. The doe lets the leopard lead itself into its own trap.

When Hyunjoon excuses himself, it comes as no surprise to Jaehyun. He watches him disappear around a dark corner, up some rickety stairs, a pink artery stretching off of the heart they’ve been within. Then he follows, a shadow behind, holding his breath. He knows all too well what Hyunjoon’s purpose is.

He reaches the upper landing just as Hyunjoon replaces the cover of the vent in the ceiling. Jaehyun waits, listens for the feather-light, crushed-velvet footsteps receding farther down the vents, then follows suit, hoisting himself up and resealing it behind him.

Hyunjoon reaches a dead-end, his final destination, and presses his ear to the metal. Gravelly voices, howling laughter, glasses clinking, chips being thrown against a table. Bulls-eye, the backroom is right below him.

He undoes his holster-strap one-handed, a motion that has become second-nature to him. But the holder’s empty. It was there when he was sitting at the bar, how-

“Looking for something?” How did he creep up on him like a knife in the dark? Doe-eyes from earlier tilts his head to one side, holding Hyunjoon’s pistol out at arm’s length, pointed at Hyunjoon’s temple. For all his manners and genteel earlier, Hyunjoon thinks, fuming.

He’s so taken aback, so thrown off, that he stumbles and causes the vent beneath him to creak. He hears the voices below stop, and then, seeming to consider the coast clear enough, resume again. He hisses, eyebrows furrowed. “Give it back!”

“Finders keepers.” He smiles, and it’s spritely, malevolent, and Hyunjoon denies how it makes him feel. Denies how impressed he is by finally meeting someone else of his caliber, a worthy adversary.

“You’re going to get us both killed!”

“Not when you’re the one trying to be stealthy wearing so much jewelry,” Doe-eyes reasons, reaching out to play with a silver cross charm hanging off of his ear. Hyunjoon doesn’t push his hand away, and he can claim it’s because he has a gun in the other all he wants, but he wouldn’t have pushed him away even if there were no threats or weapons involved. He likes it, even though he shouldn’t.

Hyunjoon is livid; the colour clouding his vision is no longer the pink of the lights, the sweet derivative of red, but the fire of both love and hatred. He’s always been the nimble-fingered, blink-of-an-eye, no-strings-attached gun for hire. Always the seducer, never the one being seduced.

“You can have your gun back, if that’s what’s upsetting you. I was just playing around.” He flips the pistol around his finger so that the grip is facing Hyunjoon to take, something out of an old spy movie long since considered ostentatious. Hyunjoon makes sure doe-eyes knows just how unimpressive and banal he finds it by rolling his eyes as he snatches the pistol back. “I’ve already done the job, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” He asks, but he hisses again, because he already knows.

Doe-eyes pulls a small vial of liquid out of his backpocket with that same second-nature that comes from experience, from doing this time and time again. They’re both so casual about it all, smooth operators, no need to walk on eggshells because they know they won’t break them. “Cyanide in his tequila. Exed-out eyes like in the Sunday morning cartoons.” A sip and he’s out of luck.

Hyunjoon hears commotion below, and peers through the slivers of metal grate, offering a slanted eagle-eye view of the room. Glass shatters. The escorts try to keep their boss standing upright, but he’s teetering, swaying, his drink bubbling out of the corners of his mouth and his eyes beginning to lose their focus. Doe-eyes peers through the grates, then pretends to dust off his hands, emphasizing that it’s a job well done.

Why didn’t he just aim for his heart and pull the trigger then and there, while he still could, before things got closer, hotter, stickier than they already were? It’s not like it’s hard for him. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t shoot and watch him bleed out, blow the smoke from the muzzle into his face and step over his fallen body without looking back.

He knows exactly why he doesn’t. He’s deluding himself, but he’s not at all clueless to the reason behind the conflict of feelings inside of him, to why he danced the way he did earlier, why he winked at those bedroom eyes, why he feels a churning, red-hot love-and-hatred deep in his gut.

This time, Hyunjoon has the upper hand. Usually, he’s patient, but this wait is agony. His knife, its edge curled and serrated so that it embeds deep and further injures when pulled out, has a heart carved and cut-out into the blade, waiting to be engorged and dripping red. He runs his fingers along the blade and holds it in his hands, crouched in the shadows behind a storefront, then pressed up against a wall behind a flickering streetlight, following him so silently that he’s sure he hasn’t caught a whiff of him; and Hyunjoon is vanilla and caramel tonight, his ears heavy with silver, because doe-eyes loved them so last time. Hyunjoon’s trying to be noticed as much as he is trying to prove a point in stealth, and maybe he’s trying to look his best while doing it. He’s dressed to kill.

It’s a shame he has to follow on foot, for subtlety’s sake. Leaning against his motorcycle in a dark alley would’ve made such a classic scene.

When he takes a sharp left and enters a low building, Hyunjoon scales the emergency escape and drops onto the eaves of the first floor. He compacts under the windowsill, making sure the lights streaming through the window don’t expose him. He watches the shadows projected onto the brick walls of the building across, of people drinking, dancing, having a good time.

A party’s the best place for a crime to go unnoticed, but only when the lights are blinding and the music is loud, and this is too small, too cute to risk it. He stays around to eavesdrop for long enough to catch his name, though.

“Look who joined us!” Laughter, infectious, bubblegum-bright. Drinks being poured. Hyunjoon is used to living life on the periphery, seeing everything out of the corner of his eye, through a grate in a vent, or discerning noise filtering out of an open window, so he catches every word clearly. “Jaehyun’s been so busy lately, I thought he wouldn’t make it.” Hyunjoon can see the suggestive wink in his mind’s eye.

“God, how many people need to be “taken care of”-“ here Hyunjoon can practically hear the air quotes surrounding the broad-voiced statement, “in the span of one week? They’re working you to the bone.”

Jaehyun laughs. “Yesterday was a special case. A bit of fun on the side, you could say.”

Hyunjoon bristles. Fun on the side, won’t seem so fun when his throat is slit for it in an hour. The wait is burning him up from the inside out, but he forces himself into motion, dropping down from his eavesdropping ledge and entering the building casually, straightening his jacket as he does. He reaches the top of the stairwell and stands in the shadows at the edge of the apartment door. He doesn’t need to feel his way around in the dark, because he’d be graceful blindfolded.

His muscles ache, his teeth sink into his lips, but he doesn’t make sound, not a pitter, a patter, not an inhale. He waits to pounce, and when he does, he plans on aiming for the jugular. And this time, he won’t feel any remorse, he’ll ignore the churning in his gut. He won’t let hatred try to shield itself by pretending to be love.

Hours pass, but this is nothing. Hyunjoon is nothing if not dedicated to his craft, loyal to his goals and set in his ways. Finally, the door opens, casting light that bounces down the stairwell, and he steps out, looking from side to side but missing the knife in the dark completely, until it’s too late. The door closes, and so do Hyunjoon’s hands around his neck.

He grips him by the collar, maneuvers so his arm is wrapped over his shoulders, holding him close in a choke-hold from behind, the serrated edge of the knife pointed into his Adam’s apple. All before he could even step off the welcome mat.

“What are you doing on the wrong side of town?” Try all he might, he can’t hide his surprise. He didn’t see this coming at all. He didn’t expect it, it didn’t even cross his mind, he’d been going about his night without a worry in the world, forgetting that he shouldn’t have poured gasoline and sparked a match yesterday night if he can’t handle the heat. Silly, silly, meddling because he’s bored, idle hands sticking themselves in other people’s holsters. When idle hands are caught by the boys in blue, they’re cuffed against the small of the back. But when idle hands are caught by a boy in black, things aren’t so merciful; their nimble fingers are chopped.

“Unfinished business. Personal vendetta.” A minute later, through a sickeningly dark smile, like charred sugar, spoiled dessert, as he tightens his grip on Jaehyun’s neck, “A bit of fun on the side.”

“Were you stalking me?” Jaehyun sputters. He acts outraged, as though he hadn’t stolen Hyunjoon’s thunder _and _his gun just the day before, as though he’s just another pedestrian, an innocent bystander being endangered.

“Absolutely. Losers weepers, remember?” Hyunjoon moves them down the stairs and out of the building; he doesn’t want their voices to echo in the empty darkness. Wouldn’t want to disturb or alert the gathering he’d just left.

  
  
“Who do you work under?” Jaehyun asks.

“So many questions,” Hyunjoon hums, clucking his tongue. “Coming from someone so sure of himself yesterday, I’m disappointed. I thought I’d finally met my match.” Jaehyun hates being teased, whispered right in his ear, and he doesn’t know how, but he thinks Hyunjoon knows this, and that’s why he does it. He loves having Jaehyun under his thumb, wrapped around his pinky, arms pinned around his neck, in his clutches. “Some of us freelance.”

“Freelance murder? That’s new.” It occurs to Hyunjoon that he probably has weapons on him, could probably try to disarm Hyunjoon, or at least wrestle his way out of his grip, but he’s not trying. He’s not trying at all.

Hyunjoon wants to react strongly to this, but every time he tries to bury the knife into his neck in a messy kill, to end the conversation and their encounters while they’re still short and impersonal, before they become something more, something longer lasting, his hand works against him. He won’t let himself. Which means it’s already too late. It’s been too late since he first laid eyes on him, since he refused to kill him the first time he had the chance.

“You intercepted me yesterday.”

Jaehyun puts his hand over Hyunjoon’s, cranes his neck to look down at the knife lodged against the soft, goosebump-speckled skin of his neck. “You want to know who _I_ work under.”

Hyunjoon nods.

“And you’ll kill me if I don’t tell you?”

They’re so childish, the two of them, making a game out of this all, holding answers just out of reach, as though it’s candy they’re refusing to share. Hyunjoon brushes his lips against his ear, wanting to make him gasp- this he succeeds in doing. “Nope. I’ll just find out myself. I have a guess or two already.”

Someone emerges out of the building entrance before Jaehyun can ask why he’s got a knife pinned to his neck if he’s not planning on killing him, and Hyunjoon releases him, flipping the knife around and pocketing it in one swift flick of silver in the air. As though his life wasn’t on the line a second before.

It’s Haknyeon. They’re still on good terms, he and Hyunjoon, after all that’s been said and done. That’s how Hyunjoon knew the building so well, because he’s been here many times before. That’s why he has a wild guess on the tip of his tongue as to who Jaehyun works for, why he thinks he already knows, but he’s hoping he’s wrong.

“Hyunjoon? Jaehyun?” His voice goes higher with each name, caught off-guard, the meeting of these two something out of his wildest dreams. Two worlds colliding within Haknyeon’s own. “How do you two know each other?”

“He can tell you all about it, I’m sure,” Hyunjoon mutters, petulant. He nods and blinks at Haknyeon in acknowledgment, then glances at Jaehyun one last sidelong time, before turning tail and letting the darkness swallow him up whole. He can’t be out in the open like this for long, especially not in such a commotion; he’d run the risk of being caught.

“Who is he?” Jaehyun asks instead, rubbing the ghosts of papercuts left on his neck. Kisses from Hyunjoon’s knife.

Haknyeon folds his arms. “That depends on which side of his weapon you’re standing on. He’ll kill you before you can gasp, drain your blood without leaving a drop on the pavement. But if he likes you, which I think he might-” here he looks up and down Jaehyun’s ruffled but unscathed body, “then he’s the most loyal, the most trustworthy, the most loving. His name is Hyunjoon.”

Jaehyun gets the feeling this is confidential information he’s just been told, information that Hyunjoon would hate to know has been divulged at his expense by such a close friend, and so he pockets it with relish. “That’s scary. He’s scary. He tried to kill me, I don’t think he likes me.” Jaehyun shudders, pulling his jacket tighter around himself.

Haknyeon doesn’t respond, just shrugs. It’s hard for him to imagine Hyunjoon as scary, because never once has he even considered getting on his bad side; it’s amusing to hear stories on the streets about Hyunjoon, because Haknyeon’s far removed from the victims. He’s only ever seen the best Hyunjoon has to offer, and that’s not something that’ll change easily.

“How do you know him?”

“A friend of a friend, he helped me through a rough patch years ago.”

So he knows him well. “Who does he work under?”

“No one. Nifty, flighty, doesn’t take orders from anyone unless they agree to his terms.” A lone wolf. He doesn’t have anyone to stop him, nor does he have anything to lose. Jaehyun suppresses another shudder. It’s not even cold tonight.

“So he wasn’t lying.”

Haknyeon furrows his eyebrows. “No, that’s why I was a bit… surprised seeing you two head-to-head. And you’ll forgive me for saying this, but I was worried for you, because he can gut you and hang you out to dry before you can even unhook your holster.”

All Jaehyun can see in his mind are the harsh lines of his eyes, in an eternal state of narrowed lividness. The pale hand gripping the heart-carved hilt of his knife. The heavy, saccharine perfume. The light music-box-lullaby swish and jingle of his jewelry as he closed in on him. It replays in his head. He laughs softly, hollowly. “I shouldn’t have stolen his pistol yesterday, huh?” He leaves out the part where he committed a crime on Hyunjoon’s behalf, all for a bit of mindless fun. He underestimated him, he just looked like such a novice, a pretty boy learning to survive in the underground of demons and monsters. Now he knows he had it coming for him, and he got off too easy.

“You _what?_”

Disengage. Walk away while you still can. Hyunjoon wants to, but fantasizing is one thing, and when it came down to it yesterday, his hand refused to bury the knife hilt-deep in Jaehyun’s neck, and tonight his body moves with a will of its own, following Jaehyun’s whereabouts again. In simple terms, he won’t rest until he confirms his suspicions as to who Jaehyun works under.

He’s perched up on the edge of a storefront sign, hiding behind the huge, lit-up, cut-out letters spelling out its name. It’s an ice cream parlor, or so it advertises, the red-and-white scalloped curtains always dusty and the glass refrigerator always missing all the best flavours. The ice cream is subpar, trust Hyunjoon on this one, and it doesn’t get much traffic at all here in the slums, but that’s alright, because it serves its purpose as the cotton-candy-beard to keep this particular boss’s headquarters off the maps.

In other words, it isn’t an ice cream parlor at all.

In other, other words, Hyunjoon is fraternizing with- no, tantalizing the enemy. It’s his old boss’s headquarters, before he went from being the one reading and finalizing his hit-lists to finding himself at the top of the hit-list, underlined three times in bold red Sharpie. He escaped somehow, and now he’s supposed to be lying low and keeping out of trouble, because the city’s dirtiest corners are still teeming with posters of his face and the price to be offered for it. Naturally, instead of lying low, here he lies slumbering in the belly of the beast.

In many ways, he’s where they least expect him to be by being on top of them, so he’s safe here. For now.

If Jaehyun works under this branch of the city’s underground, then it only makes things more controversial, more risky, more forbidden than he’d thought, because it means Jaehyun might have been sent to intercept and kill him the other night. It means Jaehyun might still be waiting for the right moment to reveal his true colours. Hyunjoon shuts his eyes tight, crosses his fingers, and hopes he’s wrong. Because if he’s right, then it means he’s already in their trap, and they’re one step ahead of him, a foot in the dark waiting to trip him.

Not only that, but it’ll mean Jaehyun is entirely off-limits, an enemy and nothing more, and he has to work against the churning in his gut and the resistance of his body to kill him, if he doesn’t want to be killed.

Hyunjoon unwraps a jolly-red lollipop and puts it between his lips, crumbling the wrapper and throwing it down so it lands in the store’s entrance. He’s usually against littering, but what lies behind this establishment is the garbage dump of the city, as far as his vitriolic concerns go, and he wants to treat it as such. The lollipop makes the waits less agonizing, and waiting makes the heart grow fonder, because as the night deepens, all Hyunjoon can think of is Jaehyun.

How can he let him go after the past two nights? It’s never so easy. But he has to, if he wants to live, he can’t trust a stranger just because he has doe eyes and soft, empty promises of I-won’t-hurt-you and I’m-only-joking. Hyunjoon knows altogether too well that seduction is one of the easiest ways to harness in a quiet kill from someone who already has the nose to sniff out danger. When it’s least expected, the element of surprise in bed, or when undressing, or when the to-be-killed is busy latched onto a neck. It would be irony at its finest if his great downfall is being seduced by someone else, after doing his best work by batting his eyelashes and blowing kisses.

Hyunjoon grinds his teeth, biting down on the lollipop and cracking it in half, shards of crystallized sugar on his stained tongue. He’ll exsanguinate Jaehyun and stuff his body in a bag without mercy, if it comes down to it. No, he can’t. Yes, he has to.

He hears the sound of an umbrella snapping shut. Steel-toed boots catching on the cobbles as they try wipe the mud off before pushing the glass door open and shouldering inside, out of the cold. Hyunjoon peers over the sign, upside-down, just in time to see him. And it’s him, alright. Standing in the parlor with the flickering lights next to the broken claw machine, hands in his pockets, waiting for orders, waiting to be escorted into the backroom and down the stairs.

So what does Hyunjoon do, after all this plotting and scheming, after steeling himself into nipping their relationship in the bud by ending Jaehyun’s life right here and now, now that it’s confirmed that he works for his old boss? He follows Jaehyun home.

He lives in a tall complex of reflective glass, piercing through the low night clouds that carry with them the fumes of the city and the dull yellow of the streetlights. He lives on the top floor, and the elevator is too high-risk, but there are always other ways to reach the roof. It’s only a matter of learning not to look down.

He tiptoes through the apartment, disoriented because he started from the bedroom out, it seems. All the lights are still off, but his cat’s eyes are practically nocturnal, needing nothing but whatever drifts up from the streetlights far below. He smooths the ripples in the rugs as he passes, straightens a picture frame containing two women, old and young, with Jaehyun standing between them; he hates seeing this, because it humanizes Jaehyun even further in his eyes. He lingers at the vanity laden with tiny vials, corked bottles, and padlocked boxes that sound powdery when shaken against the ear. It all smells of death. Exed-out eyes, skull and crossbones.

The kitchen lights come on, whiteness flooding down on him and bleaching the house of colour, until his eyes adjust. He’s supposed to be a wild animal caught in a snare trap, a criminal with search-lights pointed at his face, except he blinks slowly, poker-faced. His reflexes betray him, though, because his knife is in one hand and the other’s fingers are tapping down his thigh towards the garter-holster.

Jaehyun sets his housekeys on the black marble island counter. “Before I could even take my jacket off.”

Hyunjoon shrugs, sheathing the knife. “I move fast.”

“Balcony door?”

Hyunjoon nods. Under these overhead lights, this is the clearest he’s seen Jaehyun. He counts the freckles on his cheeks, the one on the bridge of his nose twice, notes the robustness of his thighs in stark contrast with the bony delicacy of his hands, the sharp taper of his jaw, the bite-marks from worrying his lips. Feature recognition and memorization, a fatal habit leftover from their line of work. He can see Jaehyun doing the same, making a mental map and checklist of all the things he sees. Maybe even listing all the things he likes, as Hyunjoon did.

“How’d you get around the lasers, intruder alarms, and locks?”

“I dismantled and picked them.” _Duh_, he wants to add, but he bites his tongue.

Jaehyun nods, eyes wide. He’s impressed as much as he is threatened. Where Hyunjoon was sizing him up openly, Jaehyun finds it hard to confine himself to stolen glances, drinking Hyunjoon in from the corners of his eyes. He turns away and rummages through the cabinets, pulling out jars, bread, and knives (the docile, butter kind). “Sit down,” he says, gesturing to the high stools.

Hyunjoon considers it, arms crossed over his chest, suddenly feeling very small. Alice when she shrinks into the folds of her clothes. “Why would I? I’m not a guest.”

“Well, I’m not above making sandwiches for trespassers and thieves in the night. Sit down.” Jaehyun pulls two slices of bread out. “Heavy hand on the jam, right?”

“…right.” How does he know? This is the most confusing situation Hyunjoon has found himself in. He sits down. His eyes are as hungry as his stomach for food, and it’s growling. “How do I know you haven’t laced the peanut butter with cyanide, poison expert?”

“Oh, you saw my display?” He chuckles. He calls it his display, as though they’re trophies and medals and not home-brewed death. “I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

Hyunjoon brings his knife out once again- it never really leaves his hand- and spears the sandwich Jaehyun has placed in front of him, right through the soft middle, so that raspberry jam oozes out of the orifice he created. Some sorry, symbolic, cartoonish imitation of the real things this knife has seen in its lifetime. He inspects it, and he’s aware of Jaehyun watching him amusedly as he does so.

It adds implication, and unnecessary intimacy, to trust. To place trust in someone who, in every way possible, is supposed to be your adversary, your opposition. It’s like pronouncing yourself dead to the medics before taking your last breath- it would be calculatedly stupid. But reckless disregard takes a bite out of the sandwich on the plate before him, perhaps more than he can chew, more than he’s thought through.

Jaehyun puts his chin in his hand, tilts his head to one side, his eyes warming, crinkling at their corners, a stone’s throw away from being… fond? Unbelievable. Hyunjoon is convinced he’s being toyed with, is so sure this expression is just meant to lure him in and make him feel comfortable, so he returns it with hostility. But he can’t help the way it makes him feel.

“You didn’t come just for the sandwich and my company, did you?” Jaehyun asks now, voice muffled by his hand.

“Cut ties with him and his affiliates,” Hyunjoon answers, cutting right to the chase. There’s no point in beating around the bush.

One of Hyunjoon’s favourite things to witness is the last-minute, usually last-breath realization that dawns on people’s faces when the trap they’ve been led into becomes apparent, when they realize that they’ve been tricked and there’s no escape. Jaehyun’s face is a variation of this as he realizes that Hyunjoon, as he promised he would yesterday, not only found out who he works for, but followed him all evening without a single soul sensing his presence, one with the shadows and the darkness, revealing himself only when he was done and ready.

Jaehyun shakes his head, dumbfounded. “I hope you haven’t gotten the wrong idea about me. My loyalties don’t lie with him, or anyone else, for that matter. I’m only here for the salary.”

Why does Hyunjoon care so much? Why is he putting his life on the line to warn Jaehyun about his? Because he likes him, and he’s willing to sacrifice his own safety to try to deter him before it’s too late; such is love, this is what it makes of even the most self-preserving. And because he doesn’t want him to end up trapped, or else all alone in the world the way Hyunjoon is now, at the hands of the old boss’s corner of the underground. Maybe it’s all selfishness on Hyunjoon’s behalf, because he’s finally found someone who makes his heart beat fast, and he doesn’t want to lose him in the blink of an eye. “I’ll give you a suitcase of gold bars.”

“Give me one very good reason instead.”

“I used to work under him,” Hyunjoon reveals. Jaehyun cannot gauge whether he’s lying or telling the truth. It’s always a guessing game, a never-ending Russian roulette, everyone’s masks too imperceptible, their lies and their truths honed to be interchangeable. “Why do you think I don’t anymore?”

He’s clever, Jaehyun thinks. If he’s telling the truth, then he’s revealed just enough to be convincing, but not enough to divulge any personal information about himself. He doesn’t trust Jaehyun enough yet to let him in past the stone-cold killer’s mask they all wear to protect themselves.

“That’s a hard bargain you drive, but I’ll have to pass.” He’s just playing hard to get now. He’s insatiably curious about why Hyunjoon is trying to deter him, and curious why Hyunjoon cares about his wellbeing or whatever, considering he had a knife to his throat yesterday. Little does Jaehyun know that his life has been endangered ever since he decided to buy him a pink drink that night, and it’s not Hyunjoon endangering it, believe it or not. Hyunjoon’s threats were empty. The boss’s are a loaded magazine.

Now, Jaehyun confuses him by reaching over the counter to hook his thumb in the corner of his lip and wipe a crumb away. Hyunjoon tries to lean away from his touch too late. “What was that for? We aren’t friends.”

“We aren’t _supposed_ to be friends,” Jaehyun corrects. It stings to admit it, for some reason. It’s not supposed to sting, because neither of them was supposed to develop any sort of attachment. Part of the role of stone-cold killer is keeping their desires reined in, and therefore their true selves hidden from danger. If there are no strings attached, then there’s nothing to be tangled or snipped. And of all things, falling in love on the job might be the most dangerous. “But you’re sitting in my kitchen, eating my sandwiches, talking to me like we’re old friends anyway.”

Hyunjoon doesn’t like being contradicted. He rises from his chair, confused, startled. His heart has learned to stay quiet and steady regardless of the weapon pointed at him or the gurgling death rattle coming from the body in his arms. Desensitized, or maybe overstimulated. For the first time in forever, though, he feels a spike of adrenaline and a rush through his veins.

The enemy’s best kept close, they say. But how close? Is there such a thing as too close, blurring the lines, turning a blind eye to the boundaries as you leap over them?

“This isn’t the last I’ll be seeing of you,” Jaehyun says before he can get very far. He’s got one foot in the darkness, but his face, his deceptively soft-cheeked baby face, is still caught in the light.

“Not if you can help it.” Is that a smirk? Is he enjoying this, or is this just more of that empty seduction to lead him on, like he does with every other client? Jaehyun doesn’t like how desolate the thought of Hyunjoon seeing him as just another name to check off a list makes him feel. He doesn’t like it at all.

He wants to reach him beyond the front he puts up, he wants to trust him, and to be trusted. But it’s like trying to catch lightning in a jar, or smoke in hands. He doesn’t even know if Hyunjoon has any ulterior motives, doesn’t know whether he’ll turn on him and slit his throat at any point in time. But if he was going to kill Jaehyun, then why hasn’t he done it yet? He remembers Haknyeon’s words, and realizes that he doesn’t know what Hyunjoon’s intentions are at all, whether he likes him or he’s keeping him alive only for the time being.

As scared of Hyunjoon as he is infatuated with him; but instead of making Jaehyun want to stay away, it makes him unable to resist.

“Maybe you’ll come in through the front door next time,” Jaehyun calls out after him.

Hyunjoon laughs at this, but even his laughter is unreadable. Jaehyun shudders.

Maybe he’s leading himself into his own demise. Maybe, the way the doe led the leopard into a trap in the beginning, the roles have returned to normal, and now Jaehyun’s being hunted slowly.

He’s beginning to feel very trapped, in the sticky honey-and-sweet-cream of his emotions, of the way he’s letting himself fall for someone he doesn’t know at all. The way he might be letting someone as skilled at seduction as he is at poison butter him up. If any of Hyunjoon’s words hold a grain of truth, then Jaehyun could tell his boss-

No, he can’t. For two reasons; one, he could never hand Hyunjoon in, whether this proves to be his stupid downfall or his saving grace in the future, because he feels such a strange fondness for him. And two, he feels like even if he tries, Hyunjoon will kill him in his sleep for even thinking about it, stab him in the back before he can backstab.

Then, Jaehyun turns on his bedroom lights and tosses his jacket onto the chair in the corner, lost in thought until his eyes land on the piece of glinting silver pillowed onto his bedspread. He _forgot_ his pistol on Jaehyun’s bed. It’s classic, really, the oldest trick in the book.

It’s wordlessly asking for his trust. Asking him to find him and return it to him. Yes, he has to.

The ice cream parlor’s shutters are down for the night, but the dim, flickering light stays on. If an ear or a nose is pressed to the gaps in the metal, tinny voices can be heard, and cigar smoke can be smelled. The schoolchildren are afraid to come here both because of stories of it being haunted, run by a one-eyed soul-eating witch, and because it’s missing all the good flavours, anyway. Neither of those things is far from the truth.

“A little bird tells me he saw Heo’s motorcycle docked near your house the other night.” A little bird, a little spy. “Care to explain yourself?” Gravelly voice, his throat needs clearing, probably all the phlegm built up from the nicotine and the tobacco. His hands, varicose veins and liver-spots, drum against the tabletop. “I don’t know how you drew him out of his hiding. We’ve been trying for months.”

  
Jaehyun tries to hide his surprise. So Hyunjoon wasn’t lying. In fact, had Jaehyun been more observant on the walk here, he’d have seen the posters put up all over the darkest alleyways where pedestrians don’t go, because it’s not intended for their eyes. Posters calling for Heo Hyunjoon, because he escaped the underground, and he carries too many of its secrets with him. There’s no backing out once you’ve signed a blood deal, it follows you for life, until it can sink its teeth into you, deliver its final blow, its kiss goodbye. And for now, he has the upper hand, he’s outsmarted them all, and he’s sent the entirety of the underground into chaos. Freelance, he called it, Jaehyun remembers. “If you know it’s his motorcycle, then why haven’t you killed him already?”

  
“Because he always disappears before we can catch him.” They can’t even dispose of Hyunjoon now, because they’ve trained him so well that he knows all their dirtiest tricks by heart, because he was once one of them, their darling, their most prized, seasoned killer. He learned their ways and now he uses them against them. He’s so, so clever, Jaehyun thinks.

  
The old man digs around in his crisp-ironed silk lapel, for a lighter, for another cigar, Jaehyun thinks. Instead he slides a glinting gold-tipped bullet across the table. Jaehyun has plenty in his magazine, and they both know it; this is just symbolism. He smiles at him. “Bring him here, or do it yourself. Either way, three strikes, and you’re out.”

An assassin sent after another. He weighs his options. He considers it. He thinks of how slow and delicate a process it will be to make Hyunjoon trust him enough to let down his guard. He hates himself for even considering it a second time, but he’s terrified of death, and death is what’s coming for him if he doesn’t follow through with the old man’s rules, and it’s all so ironic, his life such a caricature of itself. He fears death, so he kills for a living.

He can see himself in the future, falling madly in love with Hyunjoon in the process of trying to follow through with his boss’s commands, and once again, looking down at the golden bullet on the table, he realizes that he could never do it. He’d try, he’d try, but he’d shoot himself rather than hurt him. Such loyalty to someone he hardly knows. Judging by Haknyeon’s words, though, if Hyunjoon is as taken by Jaehyun as Jaehyun is beginning to think, then he would willingly lay his life for him just the same.

Jaehyun’s the huntsman, the old man the evil queen, the witch. He wants Hyunjoon’s heart brought back in a box. Thinking of it in these terms helps Jaehyun absorb the situation, strips it of its startling reality and keeps it at a distance, as though behind a television screen. It’s funny for a killer to be so unaccustomed to, and terrified of, death.

Jaehyun’s not the huntsman, though, Jaehyun’s the prince. He pockets the bullet, but he has no intention of laying a finger on Hyunjoon.

It’s deceptively easy to find him, when he wants to be found. Jaehyun hates how giddy that makes him feel inside.

The alley’s so narrow that two people can barely fit in it at once. A stray dog mills about at the edge of the corner where it spills into the street, next to a payphone with a shattered glass door. The scenario is anyone’s worst nightmare, anyone out past curfew rushing home, the alleys something to walk past briskly without looking back.

He talks into the darkness. “You know, usually people will leave behind a lighter, or a pen, or something insignificant. You left your pistol on my bed.”

“Oops,” the darkness responds. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time it winds up in your possession.”

Jaehyun reaches out, the pistol in hand, a repetition of when he’d handed it over that first night. Hyunjoon ashes his cigarette and reaches out for it, but Jaehyun pulls away so Hyunjoon grabs at the air. Hyunjoon laughs at the childish trick he’s fallen for.

“Step out already,” Jaehyun urges, holding the pistol just out of reach. He wants to see him up-close again, why can’t he just be up-front about it?

Hyunjoon knows this, that’s why he’s taking his sweet time. “Your under-eyes are so purple,” he comments matter-of-factly. Jaehyun instinctively reaches up to prod the tender, darkened veins. “You’ve been losing sleep.”

_Thinking of you. _But Jaehyun can’t tell him that. He breathes in the cigarette smoke wafting over him, watches Hyunjoon’s black leather boot stomp the butt and then pick it up and tuck it in his pocket, not leaving a detectable trace of his presence. He’s thin and transparent and ever-present as the smoke he blows out, everywhere and nowhere at once.

His voice is so soft. It’s so soft, it’s barely there. It’s so soft, and it almost sounds hurt. “You didn’t listen to me, did you?”

How does he know? Jaehyun feels sick to his stomach. He steps out of his hiding spot, so they’re standing a breath apart. His eyes are ink, and rimmed with the same darkness. “I couldn’t. It’s out of my power.”

Hyunjoon shakes his head. He reaches out and runs his thumb along his under-eyes, sweet doe-eyes. He’s being protective of Jaehyun by warning him like this. He’s putting himself out on the line to do this, knowing that Jaehyun could always turn on him, cowardly, bite the bait and hand him in. It’s the easiest option; too bad it’s too late for that, they’re both too hell-bent on each other to even pretend to be apathetic anymore.

Jaehyun fishes through his pocket for the golden bullet, puts it together with the pistol in Hyunjoon’s hand. Hyunjoon looks at it curiously, then meets his eyes, asking wordlessly for an explanation. Jaehyun always shudders, but it’s never because of the cold when he does. “I’m supposed to dispose of you myself. If I’m not planning on bringing you to them, that is.”

“And now you’re giving it to me…” he trails off, rolling it between his index and his thumb. “You don’t want to kill me at all, do you?”

Jaehyun shrugs uncomfortably; he hates being put on the spot. “Can we talk about anything else?”

“You’ll admit it soon enough,” Hyunjoon makes a vicious, breathy little sound in the back of his throat, maybe of amusement, maybe a twisted giggle. “We can talk about other things. Many things. We can even go somewhere nicer to talk about them.” He’s talking as he’s emptying his pistol of its bullets- he left it loaded in Jaehyun’s possession, how considerate- and jamming the golden one in. It fits into the magazine perfectly.

Jaehyun is sickened again. Now the intention is clear, that he was supposed to use Hyunjoon’s own pistol against him when it came down to it. “What are you doing?”

“Watch.” He aims at a streetlight and fires, shattering the glass and the lamp so bits of light-no-more rain down onto the pavement.

“What was that for?” Jaehyun had thought he was loading the pistol to safekeep the bullet until the time was ripe to use it, maybe against the boss himself. But maybe Jaehyun is too calculated, too vendetta-and-grudge-driven, unable to see what Hyunjoon does.

“Disposing of his expensive threats in the cheapest way possible,” he says simply. His temper keeps shifting and changing, and the more he talks, the more he surprises Jaehyun by being the opposite of what he’d expect. “Because they’re empty and they mean nothing to me.”

Tonight’s kill makes for heavy luggage, the body weighted under the man’s years of laundering and trafficking. This one’s an unpaid job, a favour for Haknyeon, vermin he spoke of wanting to dispose of in the past. It’s a little gift from Hyunjoon to him, a dead mouse with cat-fang puncture wounds on his doorstep first thing in the morning.

He loads the gun, clicks it into place, finger hovering over the trigger, one eye closed and the other on the caravan of sleek, identical black cars careening through traffic. He’s in the third car down, and it’s starting down the street his building is on. Hyunjoon is balanced in a crouch on the edge of the rooftop, frozen as a statue, counting sheep until the time is right. This is why they want him dead, because not only did he leave them behind and take all their secrets with him, but he’s taking them out now, one by one, turning on them from the inside out.

Cold rain dribbles down his face, his hair wet and slick. It makes visibility low, but it’s nothing he hasn’t done before. It soaks through the leather of his jacket and pants, through his skin, all goose-bumps and trembling spine and purple-blue lips. It doesn’t hinder him, but it makes him realize how lonely a job this is. Two would be better than one, if only because he’d have someone at his back, and someone to talk to, to look over his shoulder and smile at, when the waits are agonizing.

He fires. He doesn’t need to listen for the sound of squeaking tires, skidding, splashing of puddles, glass shattering, to know that his bullet found its way.

Sitting in an armchair this time when Hyunjoon walks into the living room, Jaehyun’s surprise fades fast. The bedroom balcony door is left open in his wake, swinging in the gusts of wind, and he’s soaking wet from head to toe, droplets pooling around him when he stops in the doorway to the room. Jaehyun is lost in the way the raindrops leak down his face and gather at the tips of his nose and chin, dripping off one by one from there.

“I considered breaking into Haknyeon’s house instead,” he greets, waving his hand dismissively. “But you know.”

Jaehyun doesn’t know. But he knows he doesn’t mind being Hyunjoon’s final destination, his choice for whatever it is he’s come for tonight. He’s wild, feral, unpredictable and full of surprises. Face soft, tongue sharp, hands small, weapons not. Jaehyun still fears him, what he’s capable of doing, how little he knows about him, but when has fear ever stopped him? “You could have just taken the elevator and knocked.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Hyunjoon is stripping himself of his weapons, digging through his pockets and his garter and setting them all on Jaehyun’s coffee table, next to his steaming mug of tea. Innocent domesticity, a mug of tea, a comic book, disrupted by the company of a pistol and a foot-long knife. Jaehyun shouldn’t act so surprised or offended, as though he’s uninvolved in the world Hyunjoon lives in.

“I don’t know how you find things to do, even in this weather.” “Things to do” is a pleasant euphemism, a blissfully vague choice of words.

Hyunjoon suppresses a sneeze. “Turn on the news, I made a clean kill.” Needy, cheeky, childish, impossible, all while still being the most formidable cutthroat killer on the run from the most lawless and dangerous men in the country. Jaehyun might never stop being surprised by him.

“You’re going to catch a cold like this, and then what will you do?”

“I’ll have you take care of me, chicken soup and checking my temperature and all that,” Hyunjoon responds, tilting his head and smiling.

Jaehyun recoils. He’s volatile, flirting and pleading and teasing all at once. “I’ll draw you a bath and put your clothes in the dryer,” he offers hastily, standing up, intending to bypass Hyunjoon in the doorway to reach the bathroom at the end of the hall.

Hyunjoon follows him, each footstep sopping against the rug. He shrugs off his jacket, tossing it aside; Jaehyun catches it in mid-air. His undershirt is stuck to him, white becoming see-through when soaked, ribs and navel and the lines of his stomach in plain view. Jaehyun turns away as he peels it off and up over his head, ruffling his hair. Jaehyun feels like he might burn up or turn to stone if he looks or gets caught looking.

Jaehyun busies himself adjusting the water’s temperature, but the sound of the water splashing into the tub isn’t enough to drown out the sound of his fingers fumbling with his belt buckle, and Jaehyun’s cheeks feel like they’ve been set on fire.

Then Hyunjoon stops, pauses, contemplating. He speaks through a smile, Jaehyun can hear it. “But I won’t get in unless you do, too. It’s boring alone.”

It’s as though Jaehyun’s hesitation and nervousness gave him the idea, as though he lives to wring Jaehyun’s life around like he’s wringing his shirt over the sink now.

Bubbles, white foam overflowing as Hyunjoon lowers himself in, gasping as the hot water stings against his cold skin. Sitting on the edge of the tub with one arm hanging into it languidly, fingers skimming the top of the water, Jaehyun keeps him company from the bathroom floor. The water comes up to just below Hyunjoon’s shoulders, lapping at his jutting, milk-pale collarbones, still encased in their silver chains and necklaces.

He can’t look away. Hyunjoon knows this, running his wet fingers through the metals, and leaning back onto the edge of the tub, basking in the silky water and Jaehyun’s eyes, all-too aware of them on him. Jaehyun pretends to look casual, disinterested, nonchalant, but who does he think he’s fooling?

“You wear so many earrings and necklaces. Are you trying to get caught?” He teases, hiding behind mockery so he doesn’t have to admit that he can’t get enough of it.

  
“I wear them to prove that I can kill, and do a fine job of it, without needing to strip myself of any of my trademarks.” Right under their noses, without making a sound.

“Trademarks.” Jaehyun swishes the water around with his fingers. “That explains the subtle perfume, too, I guess.”

“You like it. Of course you do.” Hyunjoon gathers bubbles in his hands and blows them into Jaehyun’s face, laughing contentedly when Jaehyun sputters and recoils as he always does. He rests his chin on the edge of the tub, a breath away from Jaehyun’s, their noses almost brushing. Jaehyun resists the urge to move away, because he can’t think anymore when Hyunjoon’s this close, gazing at him like he’s the only person in the world. “Don’t you have any bad habits of your own?”

“Huh. Well, there’s a practice where you drink a bit of death to develop immunity to it. Taste of my own medicine, I guess you could call it,” Jaehyun says. He puts a few drops in his mugs of tea, breakfast and before bed. “It might kill me someday, if I take a large enough dose, but if it doesn’t, then no one can ever use my methods against me.” Hyunjoon seems taken aback, for once, and he doesn’t have any anything to say in response. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says. “We all choose our poisons, that’s all I’m thinking.” Jaehyun can tell he has more on his mind, but he doesn’t ask.

“Cigarettes. Why do you smoke them? It’s such a slow way to die.”

  
Hyunjoon begins to play with the bubbles again, spreading the foam along his arms and shoulders. “Oh, that’s just a bad habit.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

  
“Doesn’t this all qualify as a bad habit? An addiction with the highest stakes, one we can’t get enough of, even though it’s so toxic?” He doesn’t mean the bubble bath, or how awake they are for such an ungodly hour of night, or even how his very presence in Jaehyun’s house is lethally dangerous. He’s speaking purely of their line of work. “But we do it anyway, for the money.”

  
“Or the thrill,” Jaehyun adds, nodding.

“To answer your question, though, it’s just cigarettes. Candy. My necklaces. They might get caught on something and strangle me one day, but I still wear them.” He’s full of secrets, yet he’s an open book.

  
Jaehyun reaches out, playing with the intricate silver chain around Hyunjoon’s neck. “You’re tame. I expected worse.”

Hyunjoon doesn’t respond kindly to being called tame. He should have known this, but again, he didn’t see it coming. Hyunjoon takes a fistful of the collar of his shirt, and pulls him over so he splashes into the tub, sending a ripple over the edge, soapy waves cascading onto the bathroom floor. Now Jaehyun’s a mirror image of the Hyunjoon from earlier, fully-clothed yet soaking wet. His shirt floats up in the water, ballooning around him.

He’s a siren and Jaehyun’s a sailor lost at sea, lured to the edge by the sweet lies and soft voices in the water, pulled overboard when he should have known better. But Hyunjoon doesn’t swallow him whole, doesn’t mean any harm; he unbuttons Jaehyun’s shirt and hangs it on the water-spout, giggling all the while. He always gets his way. “Maybe you’re my worst habit.”

Jaehyun crosses his arms, droplets of water on bare skin. “_You’re_ the one breaking into my house and trying to drown me. You’re crazy.”

“I know,” Hyunjoon says simply. He hooks his foot around Jaehyun’s leg and pulls him closer, until he can curl against his side in the tub, nothing but warm water and Jaehyun’s pants between them. When Jaehyun expects the worst, nothing comes of it; Hyunjoon’s fingers, raisin-wrinkled and warm, tap up and down his arms, from the rounded tips of his shoulders across the line of his back, feeling him all over, more curious than anything else. He traces the knobs of his spine with his index finger and counts the freckles on his back. Then he leans his cheek against his upper arm and stays there, staring up at Jaehyun until he breaks the silence.

“Drop the pretenses,” Jaehyun starts, and nervous fidgeting causes him to grab Hyunjoon’s hand out of the water and splay it, palm-up, touching the wrinkled pads of his fingers. “Forget everything else. The world is ending, and nothing matters anymore. Or… or, we have all the time in the world, and everything has been frozen in place.”

Hyunjoon doesn’t move. He sounds muffled from the way his cheek is pressed flat against Jaehyun’s arm. “What are you getting at?”

  
“I want you to tell me what you want.”

“You should be able to guess. I’ve made myself crystal clear,” he almost sings. Hyunjoon can’t give a straight answer, and Jaehyun knows this, that’s why he’s cornering him for one. He’s full of allusions, all smoke and mirrors, leaving a trail for Jaehyun to follow. He needs to know, before he lets himself fall any further, before it’s too late. As though it hasn’t been for a while now.

Jaehyun shakes his head and looks down, meeting Hyunjoon’s eyes. “I want to hear _you _say it.”

Hyunjoon is nearly on him now, having broken the surface of the water, sitting on his knees so they can face each other. Jaehyun shivers; this time he blames the water, cooling to room temperature fast.

Temptation is almost always unintentional. Temptation is a neck and an Adam’s apple that bobs up and down when he speaks, temptation is bony, spindly hands, and temptation is a pink tongue peeking out every few words. Hyunjoon has been resisting, but why should he anymore? Give him one good reason not to pounce. Temptation dangles in front of him, sits in the bathtub with him, in its purest form. “Can’t I show you instead?”

There he goes, deer in headlights. About to shrink back, until Hyunjoon puts a hand on the back of his neck and holds him in place.

“I’m not going to hurt you, don’t act so scared,” Hyunjoon laughs darkly, his eyes unmoving and focused. “I just want to kiss you.”

“Then do it already,” Jaehyun blinks, still wide-eyed, lips parted, making Hyunjoon laugh a little harder. He tilts his head sideways and comes in strong, as though he’s been holding back. This is where a siren would lose control, unable to stop until he’s gone. Hyunjoon moves his lips against his, kisses hard, but he still has to surface for air.

Jaehyun cups his cheeks in his wet, soapy hands, and seals the distance between them almost as soon as Hyunjoon creates it. Hyunjoon gasps, exclaims, his voice cut off when their lips meet again, and throws his arms around Jaehyun’s neck, splashing water everywhere.

Jaehyun kisses him until his lips are tired, but even then, Hyunjoon wants more. Jaehyun gives, and gives, and Hyunjoon keeps taking. Hyunjoon lies against the edge of the tub, pulling Jaehyun down onto him, submerged beneath him and the water. Jaehyun pulls away, presses his forehead against Hyunjoon’s, their nose-tips tickling when they brush against each other. Hyunjoon laughs again, and Jaehyun can feel the sugar rush through his veins. It makes Jaehyun warm and dizzy and prickly all over.

The city’s alive out the window, woven with glittering lights of every colour, the sky starless and black, the ocean still and distant. The underground must be an upside-down reflection of this, too, ripe and teeming with its gatherings and offers-no-one-can-refuse. Hyunjoon should care, because it affects him and Jaehyun both directly. He’s not supposed to be here, he’s not supposed to be doing this, and by lounging sprawled on Jaehyun’s soft bed, in one of his dress shirts, a little loose on his shoulders, he’s leading them both to a sickening end. But one night can’t hurt.

Thinking that is as dangerous as the smell of gasoline paired with the sound of a match striking.

He buries his face in the blankets, eyes closed. They smell like childhood pleasures, like nostalgia, a warm hug, feel against his cheek like a kiss on a bruise; a temporary, imagined comfort. Momentary, suspended happiness. Hyunjoon hasn’t felt such things stirring in his chest, such gentle adrenaline, in years. He hasn’t let himself.

“Stay overnight,” comes Jaehyun’s voice from the doorway. He’s been watching him for a while, not wanting to disturb him, having never seen his face so free of furrows and frowns, without a worry etched into it. Because he knows Jaehyun is here, and Jaehyun has his back, and he can afford to close both eyes instead of always sleeping with one open.

Jaehyun is holding Hyunjoon’s leather jacket in his hands, fidgeting with the zippers and supple fabric. He sits, and Hyunjoon rolls around so that he can watch him. “You know I can’t.”

Jaehyun puts his lips between Hyunjoon’s cheekbone and under-eye, and Hyunjoon coos audibly at this, little noises of delight that can’t be helped bubbling out of him. Then he kisses his forehead, and Hyunjoon’s eyes flutter closed, lip corners turning up. Jaehyun runs his thumb along his jaw, and he can feel Hyunjoon going jello-soft under his touch. “You like this so much.”

Hyunjoon puts his head in Jaehyun’s lap, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes. “Am I not supposed to, when someone like you is kissing me?”

Jaehyun feels so tender he worries about bursting. Hyunjoon burrows his face into where his lap meets his hip, and lifts his shirt to kiss Jaehyun’s hipbone. Jaehyun is surprised, startled, but he doesn’t recoil this time. He’s getting used to Hyunjoon’s ways.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up with me by your side?”

Hyunjoon hasn’t ever allowed himself to give fantasies like that any thought. It wouldn’t work, it couldn’t. Both of them would take the blow, and Jaehyun would be made to pay Hyunjoon’s price, and Hyunjoon wouldn’t be able to live with that, which is why he usually keeps such a distance. Why did he come here tonight, then, knowing all of this? Because he’s gotten a taste of irresistible temptation, and a droplet of it on the tip of his tongue wasn’t enough, and now he’s drowning himself in it. “As if. If I spend any more time here as it is, you won’t be waking up at all.” He can see that Jaehyun is put-out by his response. “I’m sorry. I mean, it would be nice. It’s just not realistic for us.”

It stings. Reality does, like a twisting of pinched skin to wake you from a dream. Jaehyun goes back to Hyunjoon’s jacket, and he finds a pocket in the shoulder, a very small pocket that almost goes unnoticed at first glance. He feels it with his fingers, finds a clasp, undoes it. “What is this?”

Hyunjoon opens his eyes fully now, sees Jaehyun’s fingers undoing the clasp, pulling the little blue-encased pill out of its slot, and hisses, making a grab for the jacket. “Nothing.” Jaehyun pulls his hands away, suspending it high out of Hyunjoon’s reach. “Give it back!”

Jaehyun holds the blue pill up to the light, scrutinizing it through narrowed eyes, rolling it between his fingers, holding it under his nose. “Cyanide? Why do you carry a cyanide tablet on you?” A single pill can’t possibly be of use against anyone.

Hyunjoon hisses under his breath again, closing his eyes. “I forgot your specialty was poison.”

Jaehyun’s put it all together by now. “Isn’t this what soldiers used to do if they were captured as prisoners of war? Kill themselves by biting it out of someplace within easy reach, even if their hands are bound, before anyone else could have the pleasure of doing it.”

Hyunjoon lifts his head from his lap, huffing. He doesn’t deny it. “What did we just talk about? You seem to have forgotten how unstable my existence is. I have to be ready for the worst.”

Jaehyun cares altogether too much. The way he cares, the way he’s so alarmed by this discovery, trying to dissuade Hyunjoon against it, preserve his life as though it means something- it’s almost sickening to Hyunjoon. He’s not used to this at all, between the closed-eyes comfort of knowing someone’s got him from earlier, to now knowing that there’s someone out there who’s afraid of losing him, it’s too much. It’s unwanted, because knowing someone is attached to him makes him think twice about how ready he’s been to die without a second glance at this world. “Why on earth would you use a cyanide kill-pill?”

He’s always known the feeling of being wanted bitterly, dead, captured, but he’s never known the feeling of being wanted sweetly, alive, breathing, as he is. This kind of wanted fills him with a sense of dread, knowing that his life isn’t the only one he’d be ruining if he’s captured. “You’d rather see me get caught and die a tortuous death than a quick, painless one?”

“I’d rather not have to see you die at all.” These are the words Hyunjoon feared hearing. They ring in his ears. “And if you’re with me, if we’re together-”

  
If Hyunjoon lets himself, which he doesn’t, he can’t afford to, his eyes could blur at these words. He doesn’t know how to handle them, because he’s never expected to have someone by his side. “You can’t just say that,” he interrupts cruelly. “My name and my records are already out there, and being with you isn’t going to stop anybody who catches me from lodging a bullet or five in my lungs.”

“Over my dead body,” Jaehyun says, rising off the bed.

“That’s nice, but that’s exactly what I’m warning you against. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill you to get to me. Don’t endanger yourself for me like that.” Why would he be so ready and willing to die for someone like Hyunjoon, a cold-blooded killer, irredeemable and on the run? Hyunjoon can’t see it in himself, whatever it is that Jaehyun sees. He could never let Jaehyun come in his way. He doesn’t like owing anyone anything, and he can’t imagine owing his life to someone he’s let himself love.

Jaehyun ignores him, scouring the room for something, pill still in hand, at arm’s length as though even a whiff of it might poison him. It’s a testament to how toxic it is, Hyunjoon supposes, if the assassin with a penchant for poison, who keeps vials in his back-pocket at all times, is treating it so gingerly.

Hyunjoon is on his heels. “What are you doing?”

He talks too much, says whatever’s on his mind without considering that Hyunjoon might stop him. “I’ll crush it so you don’t have any use for it, since I know you won’t listen to me.”

Hyunjoon grabs his wrist and knocks the pill out of his grip, sending it arcing high in the air. He catches it with his other, free hand, and lets go of Jaehyun. He drags his jacket off the bed and stuffs it into the pocket, hastily, mindlessly, moving in a huff. He shrugs the jacket on over Jaehyun’s shirt. All the feelings he had earlier have shattered like glass, and now he realizes what a mistake all of this is. It’s always too late when he does.

Jaehyun stands in front of the balcony door, arms crossed. “Promise me you won’t take it.”

Hyunjoon rolls his eyes and turns away without saying goodbye. This time he leaves through the front door and takes the elevator.

A click of the tongue is what greets Jaehyun this time. A simple sound of disapproval on the surface, but Jaehyun knows how dangerous that sound is. Last time was a warning, this time it’s not-so-subtle threats.

He focuses his eyes on the swirling peppermint red-and-white of the machinery behind the old man’s head. The cloying smells in this place, between the old man’s perfume and sour breath, his cigar smoke trapped with nowhere to go (as all the windows shut against the street outside), and the fake-fruit of the untouched ice cream in the display cases, Jaehyun feels like he’s choking on air. It’s like sugar in children’s cough syrup, a cheap attempt at covering up the bitterness underneath.

No matter how hard they try to cover it up, both the shop and the man doing his bidding behind its closed doors reek of death, of spine-prickling danger. No wonder even the local children aren’t fooled by the guise.

“He was in your house a second time, and you let him go again? That’s a shame.” The scratchy firework-flick of a lighter and another cigar begins to emit smoke.

“Why are you stalking me?” Jaehyun brings himself to say, straightening in his chair, putting his hands flat on the table. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”

The old man leans back when Jaehyun presses forward, flicks the hand holding the cigar around, making slow, lazy flourishes in the air near his head as he speaks, punctuating his words. “We want to make sure you don’t stray, and it’s proven handy, hasn’t it?”

Jaehyun’s throat dries. He’s on his second strike.

The old man carries on, the lines around his mouth hardening. “You won’t be letting him go a third time, will you? Then I’d have to have someone else step in and do your job for you.” He chuckles, as though pleased with the words he says next. “I’ll have it be two birds with one stone.” Such a roundabout way of saying that if Jaehyun doesn’t kill him, then he gets killed. Such is the underground; no matter how many years someone spends working tirelessly under another, it can all fade in an instant, any instant, distrust and suspicion rampant and infectious. They’ll spill blood to keep their secrets bottled.

Everything is about self-preservation. Everyone’s a lone wolf, in the end, tooth-and-claw fighting for themselves, no one to trust or be trusted by. No wonder Hyunjoon is the way he is. But what if one became two. Jaehyun, sitting in this chair right now, stupid and damning as it may be, wouldn’t hesitate to put his life at risk for Hyunjoon’s. This isn’t anything anyone, not in the underground, not Hyunjoon, has heard of. Sacrifice, in the name of love? The old man would laugh until it turns into a choke and a rattle if he knew what Jaehyun was thinking.

Jaehyun doesn’t care anymore. He still fears death, but the shrewdness of his fear is outweighed by the stupidity of his love. He winces, feeling ill.

The old man leans in once more, putting his half-finished cigar out in the bottom of his cup so it sputters and lets off acrid fumes. One of the flickering lights above them pops and goes out. “If you let him go another time, then you won’t be any better off than he is.”

“He’ll threaten your family next.”

Jaehyun spins around, hands in pockets and collar turned up against the wind. He doesn’t see anyone behind him, but he’s walking through alleys, under eaves and awnings, so naturally, he looks up, and finds himself face-to-face with Hyunjoon, perched above.

“How do you know where I’ve been?”

“Just a wild guess, calm down,” Hyunjoon responds, lollipop in his mouth, blowing up one cheek where the other is hollow. Cigarettes, lollipops, bitten fingernails, kisses. He doesn’t talk much, but he sure likes to keep his lips busy. “And you’re walking a mile in my shoes, you know? I’ve been through all of this.”

He jumps down, barely making a sound when he lands on the ground and straightens up in front of Jaehyun. Jaehyun reaches out tentatively and takes his hand; Hyunjoon entwines his fingers in his and squeezes hard, as though fighting against someone trying to pry them apart. “Are we on speaking terms again? You seemed angry yesterday.”

“That’s not important,” Hyunjoon says quickly, hoping it’ll make Jaehyun forget that he’s still carrying the kill-pill in his shoulder-pocket, within easy reach, if need be. Hyunjoon moves the lollipop from one cheek to another. “You need to leave. You need to cut all ties with him, now.”

“Where do I go? What happens to you?”

“Think about it this way: I’m affected by your actions no matter what you do. If you hand me in or kill me right now, then I die, and you live. If you choose to stay here, then we can never see each other again, and you’ll be killed for letting me go. Save yourself, and stop worrying about me. I’m telling you to go.” This is the most Jaehyun has heard him say, and he doesn’t know if he’s dizzied by it or by the words themselves.

“And if we run away together-”

Hyunjoon interrupts him. “No. I’ll fight my own battles.”

“But if we’re all tangled together already anyway, then I’m in the same danger as you are.”

Jaehyun is agitated, stupid in love unable to let Hyunjoon go, even though it should be so easy, he shouldn’t be so afraid of losing him considering how easily everything could be over, for them more than anyone, from day one. He shouldn’t be this attached, this stubborn, this stupid about it, but still he digs his heels in. “Would you stop being so stoic about this? Don’t you trust me? Two’s always better than one.”

Hyunjoon shushes him, because his voice had begun to rise. “It’s my mess, and if I have to die for it, then I die alone. I won’t let you die for me.”

They’re both doing the same thing, and trying to stop each other from doing it. They’re selflessly trying to protect each other, to preserve each other’s lives, even if it means the absence of their own. But if neither of them will live without the other, then why not run together, and die together, if it comes down to it?

“Don’t you see that I’ve already gotten myself in this far, and there’s no turning back now? This is my last chance, and I’m not going to hand you in. So my existence is already tied to yours.” Jaehyun breathes through his nose. Hyunjoon cracks the lollipop in his mouth, arms crossed, boot tapping against the pavement, trying to drain his body of its overload of adrenaline. “You can’t choose other people’s fates for them. I’m telling you I’m not leaving without you.”

He waits for Hyunjoon’s answer. It takes a while to come. In the meantime, the lollipop’s been replaced with bubblegum, and he’s blowing pink bubbles and popping them with his tongue, lost in thought, eyebrows furrowed. In spite of the circumstances, the immediate danger they’re in, out in the open on a street-corner, electric adrenaline coursing through them, Jaehyun wants to cup his face and kiss his tutti-frutti lips.

When Hyunjoon comes to a decision, rather than it seeming sound and well-thought-out, Jaehyun gets the feeling he’s keeping something from him. When he kisses Jaehyun’s cheek, then his collarbone, lips sticky, hands wandering over Jaehyun’s hips and pockets, and says, “I’ll come get you later,” it seems uncharacteristic of him, too upfront. It’s a white lie; no, it’s a pink lie. He wishes his sugar had been enough to wash away the bitter taste left in Jaehyun’s mouth.

Jaehyun does as he was wordlessly told, for a bit at least. He stays put, he paces around, thinking about what Hyunjoon could have disappeared to do, when time is ticking and the underground’s on the prowl for them, now more than ever. He heads for his apartment complex, deciding to loiter around there, scope out the place, hope Hyunjoon makes a reappearance. No such luck.

He rounds the corner, and his building is in plain sight, but the street-lights are off. That’s odd. He freezes in place, trying to read between the shadows, using the dim lights of car head-lights from other side-streets to see. He sees figures in black fatigues, armed and positioned, as though on-guard and waiting for someone.

That someone has the good sense to turn around as silently as he can. If his knees are so weak, his mind flying a mile a minute, his eyes wild and unable to focus on the pavement in front of him as he walks, then why did he ever take this job? Why did he not have the foresight to consider the outcome, how easy it would be for them to turn on him, to dispose of him? Predator becomes prey, and prey is buried beneath the ground, and replaced with someone else. This isn’t a sentimental business, and lives are taken for granted; he should know firsthand. He’s just never thought about what it would be like to be the one targeted.

If he hadn’t taken this job, he would never have met Hyunjoon. But is Hyunjoon someone worth killing and dying for? Stupid, stupid in love doesn’t even give this a split-second’s consideration. Of course he is.

In Jaehyun’s empty, abandoned apartment, the front door left open and his furniture turned over and searched, the phone rings. On the other end of the line, Haknyeon is trying to deliver news that, if Jaehyun could pick up and hear, would make his blood run cold.

Jaehyun’s already running, running right into a trap, from an outsider’s eyes. But he’s trying to follow Hyunjoon’s mindset in order to find him, and Hyunjoon thinks the enemy’s best kept close. So close, that they don’t see you coming, close the way when someone’s face is close enough, your eyes blur it away and stop being able to focus on it. So Jaehyun dives into the belly of the beast.

The ice cream parlor is abandoned. The storefront display glass is shattered, however, wounded with bullet-holes, and the lights are out, dangling, swinging. It wasn’t like this when Jaehyun was here earlier, and these are Hyunjoon’s trademarks. He was just here. Jaehyun almost smiles, until he remembers that he still hasn’t found Hyunjoon.

Down the musty, steep stairs, in the cellar-backroom, amber liquid pools on the table and drips off its edge. A cup with a jagged, broken edge sits in the pool, and a cigar floats along its top. One of the two chairs is toppled over. Jaehyun searches the scene, frantic, feeling unsafe and exposed here, even though he knows this ice cream parlor is abandoned and will stay that way now, after such a breach.

On the other chair, left for him to find, is a tiny, unstopped vial. Contents emptied. It’s all-too familiar, because it was sitting on Jaehyun’s vanity until this evening, when he pocketed it before leaving the house. He curses. That’s what Hyunjoon’s hands were doing when he kissed him. He picks up the cup, and smells the rim. Cyanide. Of course. Only Hyunjoon would pick his pockets and use his own methods to defend him in some kind of valiant swansong.

What happens in Snow White? The witch falls to her death. Well, in this retelling, the witch is tricked into taking a bite of her own poisoned apple. Jaehyun almost smiles. But Hyunjoon is still being chased down by mercenaries, somewhere around this city, and he still has a bit of poison apple in his shoulder-pocket, and in this retelling, there will be no coffin of flowers and no resurrecting kisses if Jaehyun doesn’t act fast.

He takes the stairs three steps at a time. On his way out, however, he nearly trips over something discarded on the ground. It glints silver. It’s not like Hyunjoon to lose his weapons so easily, not without a fight.

He runs down the dark, quiet street, his breath coming out in plumes, still dizzy, his stomach turning over, and hopes that wherever Hyunjoon is, he still has his knife.

Outnumbered and surrounded. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He’s trying hard not to fall to his knees, pressed against the grimy wall, fumbling in the dark for his heart-carved knife, holding it out against the shadows in the dark. The shadows laugh and whistle, load their guns and threaten him. One comes close, and he dodges a bullet and stabs him in the shoulder, releases him and watches him fall to the ground. He kicks him unconscious. Hyunjoon’s breathing is coming out shallow.

Just hold on. Someone will come for him, he convinces himself, wiping the blood from his torn lip and smearing it across his cheek and hand. This can’t be his end. His knuckles are burning and raw, his lip swollen, his shoulder wrenched, his collarbone bruised and cut-open. His head throbs. The pill in his shoulder-pocket feels so heavy, seems like it would be so sweet on his tongue. Like candy. He closes his eyes and shakes his head.

Someone will come for him, he can’t keep going alone. Haknyeon will come. Jaehyun can’t, he can’t, he’s the last person Hyunjoon wants to see here. He gives them five minutes, and begins counting sheep. One of the mercenaries shoots, and he darts further into the shadows, trying not to groan out loud when it skims his arm. A soundless cry for help, all alone in the dark. He shouldn’t have done this alone.

One of them edges closer, he can hear their footsteps approaching. Clumsy, they give themselves away so easily. He braces himself, balls his hands, one around the hilt of the knife, the other into a fist. He clenches his teeth and fights, aims for the jugular and the nose. Another one down, but there’s an endless stream waiting in hiding, until they tire him out.

It’s funny, Hyunjoon laughs, because they’re operating on a dead man’s orders. A man he killed. Good riddance, he had it coming for him.

The next one comes in too strong. Hyunjoon barely dodges the bullets, but as he’s regaining his lost footing, the mercenary uses the hilt of his gun to strike down on Hyunjoon’s bad shoulder, and he crumples to the ground. The knife clatters out of his grip, nothing but a glint of sharp silver out of fingers’ reach.

Hyunjoon rips the clamped fabric open with his teeth and now the kill-pill, the cyanide capsule, passes between his lips.

Having Hyunjoon’s pistol in his hands reminds him of when he thought it was a bit of harmless fun to steal it from his holster. Now he wishes nothing more than to return it to him, to see it in his hands.

He rounds the corner, but he can hardly see. He’s ambushing them when they least expect it; they still think he’s one of them. There’s someone bowed in the shadows under an emergency escape- here his heart lurches into his throat, he’s sure it’s Hyunjoon- and there’s someone standing above him. He aims and fires. It’s blind intuition, at this point, instinct more than accuracy, but Jaehyun’s always been sharp. Not quite as good as Hyunjoon, but formidable even in the dark.

The gunshots ring through his ears, and he shoots until no one else steps out, until it all dies down to the white noise of a seemingly-distant city. Then he’s on Hyunjoon in an instant. The first place his hand goes is to his shoulder, and he feels the empty pocket, and his stomach turns again, but he swallows it all down. Jaehyun’s fingers frantically pry at Hyunjoon’s lips, under his tongue. Hyunjoon chokes and spits. He’s been holding it between his teeth. He spits it into Jaehyun’s hands, and Jaehyun throws it like it’s searing hot. It lands in the gutters on the edge of the alley.

“I didn’t promise because I knew I’d break it,” Hyunjoon says, labored, his voice gurgling and rough around the edges. He spits again.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got your back,” Jaehyun pulls him into his arms, he’s too overwhelmed with Hyunjoon being alive to feel anything else, and although Hyunjoon winces and hisses in pain, he wraps his arms around him with that same startling intensity as when he’d held his hand. As though terrified someone will take him away. As he collapses into the safety of Jaehyun’s arms, he’s like a child, even though in many ways he couldn’t be farther from one.

He pulls away and tries to examine him. Hyunjoon turns his face away every time Jaehyun tries to look at it. When he puts his hand on his chin, his fingers come away bloody. Hyunjoon takes the pistol from Jaehyun’s hands, and Jaehyun’s seeing double of the silver knife glinting a few feet away from them, but still he reaches for it and returns it to Hyunjoon. He feels safest with his weapons on him, and Jaehyun doesn’t blame him.

Still in the dark, still in the alleyway, the search-lights and the sirens will come into earshot within minutes. But neither of them moves. Instead, Hyunjoon begins to laugh to himself. “You tried to assassinate _him_?” Jaehyun asks.

“Don’t speak ill of the deceased,” he chides sarcastically, laughing even harder. “I tried, and I succeeded. Third time’s the charm.” A tear falls from the outer corner of his eyes and trickles down his cheekbone. “It’s what I’ve been wanted for in the first place. He never expected to find his gun-for-hire pointing in the wrong direction, and he never expected to find me in his parlor tonight.” So that’s what he’s been wanted for all along. It’s a perfect crime, in some ways.

Jaehyun is amazed, impressed, terrified. It’s always fear mixed with love, with Hyunjoon, isn’t it? He laughs in the face of danger, dangles a bone in front of a dog’s eyes for fun. Most of the time, it pays off. But even when it doesn’t, he always gets his way, like tonight. “You’re crazy.”

“I’m sorry for stealing your poison. I’ll ask next time.” An eye for an eye, Jaehyun thinks.

Hyunjoon’s in much worse shape than he is, but still he’s the one who rises up first, swallowing back his pain, biting his torn lip so more deep red bubbles out, the taste like metal on his tongue. He offers Jaehyun a hand, when Jaehyun should be the one helping him.

He sheathes his knife and tucks his pistol into its holster, and avoids the street-lights on their way out. Avoids the dead bodies littering the alleyway, too, as though they’re not even there, as though nothing had just happened. He walks out without looking back. Jaehyun’s hand is firm on his waist, worried he might collapse, he looks so battered and withered down.

They reach his motorcycle, where he’d left it on his way in, near the parlor, untouched on its kickstand, a scene apart from the one they’d just left. “Are you sure you can drive?” Jaehyun asks.

Hyunjoon laughs again. Why is everything so funny to him? It’s because he doesn’t know how to handle any of this, not the trauma, not the pain, not the protectiveness, not someone else flanking him and coming to his rescue. “I’ve seen worse nights and made it home alright.” Hyunjoon offers Jaehyun the spare helmet, but leaves his own hanging.

He doesn’t take it, pushes it away. “Why won’t you wear yours?”

“Is it really necessary in my current state?”

The sirens have begun. There’s commotion rising in the outer streets, people beginning to feel the aftershocks of the gunshots, the echoes followed by this current silence. Jaehyun won’t let them leave until he clamps the helmet buckle under Hyunjoon’s chin, however much Hyunjoon complains about it hurting. He spits more blood onto the curb, and sways when he does. Jaehyun catches him, but he pushes him off before he can worry about him again. And with that, they’re out of sight, fleeing the scene right as the dapple of red-and-blue lights rounds the corner, sirens blaring, tires squeaking against the asphalt.

Sunwoo, a friend of Haknyeon’s, meets them once they leave the city, everything wind-whipped and the whole world spinning too fast when Hyunjoon slows to a halt. He takes them down an empty stretch of road, headlights off because they’d be spotted easily otherwise. The trees thicken around them, and eventually they reach a safe-house for overnight.

Sunwoo doesn’t ask, doesn’t tell, and hardly cares because he’s seen plenty of this. Admittedly he is a little curious about the two of them, because he’s heard a lot through word-of-mouth, and he’s almost never hidden two people together like this. He notices the way Jaehyun’s hand doesn’t leave Hyunjoon’s side, and he knows who Hyunjoon is and what he’s done tonight, both from Haknyeon and through a reputation of his own, the posters around town and his name and trademarks thrown around in conversation. It’s something of a happy ending he’s witnessing, in its own twisted way. He makes a mental note to ask Haknyeon about all of this, but he gives them the keys and leaves without a word.

As soon as the door is locked and bolted behind them, Hyunjoon’s body goes slack, and he begins to sway, falling into Jaehyun’s hand, which has been at the small of his back waiting for this to happen since the alley. Jaehyun’s anticipated this, sensed him on the brink of it. He catches him, holds him easily, he’s so feather-light and papery, smoke in the wind.

He leans against the light-switch to turn it on with his shoulder, and under the harshness streaming down from overhead, as his eyes adjust, he sees that Hyunjoon’s conscious and awake in his arms, just weak. He also sees the raw skin, the purple-green bruises blossoming, the torn and the split-open. His skin is smeared with red, some caking into blackness, some still oozing fresh.

Jaehyun finds the bathroom, all while maneuvering Hyunjoon’s frame delicately through doorways and across halls. The bathroom connects to the bedroom, and he puts Hyunjoon down on the bed. Here he stays upright on its edge, but he begins to let his pain show through, no longer able to keep up the stoicism. He has one hand on his shoulder, his injured collarbone, and tears are leaking out of the corners of his eyes.

This night doesn’t end, the dawn seems nowhere near breaking. Jaehyun finds it in him to wet a wash-cloth in the sink. Crouching on skinned knees before him, he gently shrugs the jacket off of Hyunjoon’s shoulders and discards it. He sheds his layers slowly, and brushes the sweat-slicked hair out of his face, tilting his chin up with his hands to examine it.

He begins by taking his earrings out, one by one. Hyunjoon tilts his head back and winces, even though Jaehyun’s fingers are gentle, untangling the metal and unhooking it nimbly. Then he stems the wounds and dabs at the dried blood, so that Hyunjoon’s skin goes pink where red swirls against the corpse-white. He cleans his raw, skinned knuckles, and kisses his hands as he does.

“I’m poison,” Hyunjoon says deliriously, trying to pull away. Here he’s smaller than ever before. “It’s in my bloodstream.”

“Hush. You spat it out before it could get that far,” Jaehyun reassures, as much to himself as to Hyunjoon. He can’t have swallowed it, or else he wouldn’t be this awake and aware right now.

“No, not that,” Hyunjoon still has it in him to roll his eyes, to smile weakly, a watery thing. Another tear falls down his cheek, and Jaehyun gets the feeling this one isn’t from the physical pain he’s feeling. “I mean me. I’m poison for you. Look at how I ruined your life.”

Jaehyun holds his lip with his thumb. “Stop moving your lips, I can’t clean your cut well that way,” he says, softly, putting an end to it for now. Hyunjoon breathes in deeply and tries to wipe his eyes with the backs of his hands, but Jaehyun pushes them away and kisses his closed eyelids. Then he kisses the side of his lip that isn’t so swollen.

Hyunjoon softens under his kisses, leans into Jaehyun’s touch when Jaehyun puts his hands first on his shoulders, then lets them trail down and settle on his hipbones. “I should never have-”

“Hush. I know my poisons. Poison is bitter, poison eats away at you from the inside out, a droplet on your tongue makes you want to spit it out. You’re sweet, and I can’t drink enough of you,” he says, looking up at him. Hyunjoon cups Jaehyun’s jaw in his hands. “You’re my sweet antidote.”

**Author's Note:**

> it's 4 am and i'm posting this after coming up with the plot and writing it all out in just over a week's time. crazy, right? i enjoyed it so fucking much though. it was so fun, maybe the most fun i've had writing in ages....
> 
> this is my humble horrible contribution to the jaehwall tag... *beats down your door* please accept it
> 
> i hope you enjoyed, PLEASE do tell me if you did! i run on feedback and support, leave a comment or come talk to me on twitter @hwalljelly!!!!!!!!! thank u for reading


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